Anti-politics and Global Climate Inaction: The Case of the Australian Carbon Tax (original) (raw)
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Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change , 2021
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Despite growing evidence of significant impacts from human-induced climate change, policy responses have been slow. Understanding this policy inertia has led to competing explanations, which either point to the need to build a consensual politics separated from economic partisanship, or which encourage solidarities between environmental and social movements and issues. This article analyses a recent successful mobilisation, leading to the passage of the Clean Energy Act in Australia, to explore the relationship between attitudes to environmental and social protection, particularly among the core constituency in favour of stronger climate action. Using social survey data from the Australian Election Study, the article finds evidence of independent associations between prioritising environmental concerns and support for welfare state expansion, and a realignment of materialist and post-materialist values. This we argue is consistent with Polanyian analysis that posits a link between social and environmental causes based on resistance to commodification.
Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 2019
Contemporary discourses on climate change have been analysed as profoundly depoliticised. At the same time, this post-political thesis has been challenged for not taking the multiplicity of voices and actually existing forms of contestation into account. In this paper, I investigate the tension between these two positions and show that the existence of diverging voices and environmental struggles does not disprove the post-political thesis as such. I do this both from a theoretical and an empirical point of view. Theoretically, the paper presents a rereading of post-foundational theory and its implications for dealing with climate change. Empirically, the paper is based on activist research in the Transition Towns and Climate Justice Action movements, which have variably been depicted as profoundly political and depoliticised. The paper argues that it is often overlooked that it is on the level of discourse or representation that the diagnosis of post-politics should be made. It is not reality as such which is post-political, but the way reality is portrayed and thereby constructed. On this basis I argue that post-politics is a real problem for grassroots climate movements and that the attempt to overcome it is not only a necessity but also a profound challenge for them.
The logic of collective action and Australia’s climate policy*: Collective action and climate policy
Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 2010
We analyse the long-term efficiency of the emissions target and of the provisions to reduce carbon leakage in the Australian Government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, as proposed in March 2009, and the nature and likely cause of changes to these features in the previous year. The target range of 5-15 per cent cuts in national emission entitlements during 2000-2020 was weak, in that on balance it is too low to minimise Australia's long-term mitigation costs. The free allocation of output-linked, tradable emissions permits to emissions-intensive, trade-exposed (EITE) sectors was much higher than proposed earlier, or shown to be needed to deal with carbon leakage. It plausibly means that EITE emissions can rise by 13 per cent during 2010-2020, while non-EITE sectors must cut emissions by 34-51 per cent (or make equivalent permit imports) to meet the national targets proposed, far from a cost-effective outcome. The weak targets and excessive EITE assistance illustrate the efficiency-damaging power of collective action by the 'carbon lobby'. Resisting this requires new national or international institutions to assess lobby claims impartially, and more government publicity about the true economic importance of carbon-intensive sectors.
The logic of collective action and Australia’s climate policy*
Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 2010
We analyse the long-term efficiency of the emissions target and of the provisions to reduce carbon leakage in the Australian Government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, as proposed in March 2009, and the nature and likely cause of changes to these features in the previous year. The target range of 5-15 per cent cuts in national emission entitlements during 2000-2020 was weak, in that on balance it is too low to minimise Australia's long-term mitigation costs. The free allocation of output-linked, tradable emissions permits to emissions-intensive, trade-exposed (EITE) sectors was much higher than proposed earlier, or shown to be needed to deal with carbon leakage. It plausibly means that EITE emissions can rise by 13 per cent during 2010-2020, while non-EITE sectors must cut emissions by 34-51 per cent (or make equivalent permit imports) to meet the national targets proposed, far from a cost-effective outcome. The weak targets and excessive EITE assistance illustrate the efficiency-damaging power of collective action by the 'carbon lobby'. Resisting this requires new national or international institutions to assess lobby claims impartially, and more government publicity about the true economic importance of carbon-intensive sectors.